


the things that other people say

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Boss/Employee Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Making Out, Office, Older Man/Younger Woman, Prompt Fill, Secret Relationship, Sneaking Around, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 16:56:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1949010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt by anon:  <i>How about some ficlets of skoulson-loving ALMOST getting caught in various places in the Playground (physical, flirty eyes, hands, etc)?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	the things that other people say

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt request at Fuck Yeah Skoulson blog.
> 
> [Link to the post](http://fuckyeahskoulson.tumblr.com/post/91480070035/we-were-going-about-our-day-you-know-talking).

 

When they hear Agent Koenig walk into the room Coulson raises his finger to Skye's lips. She gives him a _Really?_ look; after all she is the one who insisted it's too soon to tell the others, she is the one insisting on being careful.

It was naive of Coulson to think making out with a subordinate in the archives could have a happy ending and for a moment Coulson is sure, absolutely sure that they are going to get caught, that Koenig is going to casually walk into this aisle and see them like this. But Skye looks calm, confident, Coulson looks into the dark pink of her lips and he wants to kiss her again and for a moment he wonders if it would be so bad, getting caught. He'd have a lot of explaining to do to the team, but he doubts the world is going to end.

He wonders if Skye would mind, even if the world were to end.

She stays very quiet, pressed as she just was against him, with her face hidding into the curve of his shoulder now. 

He can feel Skye's lips brushing against his neck. He can feel her smile.

This is not funny, he wants to tell her, but that would alert their visitor. And if Coulson thinks about it, it is a bit funny. He's a veteran and Skye is pretty seasoned as an agent at this point, and here they are hiding behind a shelf of cardboard boxes, fooling around in the darkest corners of the base. He doesn't mean to but he smiles too, against the soft mess –he messed it up– of Skye's hair.

Koenig takes his time. Coulson swears he couldn't do it worse if he were doing this on purpose. It's not that he can't be stealthy or that Skye can't stay still – though she seems too amused by the situation, her body shaking with excitement against his.

He'd like to pretend they live in a vacuum and this they are doing doesn't affect others. That it isn't against protocol. Even though they are dictating their own protocols now, and this is not by far the most epically atrocious decision Phil Coulson has ever made in his life. But they do not live in a vacuum and protocol was invented for a reason and – but now Skye is wrapping her arms around his neck again, like she couldn't care less there's another person in the room and Coulson remembers why he broke protocol in the first place. It was _for this_.

Billy Koenig starts humming some undecipherable melody while he digs into a stack of files. Skye lifts her head, her nose brushing against Coulson's mouth, his cheek. He draws a noiseless breath and kisses her softly.

Finally, blisfully, Agent Koenig seems to find what he came looking for.

Finally, they can hear him walking out of the room. Coulson makes a mental calculation of safety distance before turning to face Skye.

"Safest place in the whole base," he comments. "That's what you said."

"I'm sorry," she says, _not sorry_ , covering her mouth with her hand.

"And now you are laughing."

"You should have seen your face. You went pale like a corpse. Glad to know that's how you feel about the perspective of being caught kissing your communications specialist."

"Skye..." He realizes he has been holding her by the hips this whole time, fingers splayed against her waist.

"Told you this would be fun," she says, deflecting.

She hasn't said anything like that. They haven't said anything like that. But if Coulson can overlook the obvious complications of this arragement – and he is finding easy to do that right now, because Skye's mouth is once more attacking the sensitive spot under his right ear – he has to admit what they have been doing these past few minutes, before they heard Agent Koenig wander into the room, has been pretty fun.

 

+

 

It's unusual of them to become so competitive.

Even FitzSimmons are impressed, because he and Skye normally do so badly at this kind of thing, specially at Scrabble (they do better in luck-based games). Or rather, it's just that everyone else in the team does a lot better. So they have never really had the chance to become passionate about the outcome.

But tonight their team is ahead. Not that Coulson would ever admit it but it feels good to be beating these two British brats for once. 

"I wonder if we are rusty," Fitz tells Simmons, as the only possible explanation.

"None taken," Skye says.

Skye has been taking a bit of advantage of this teaming-up situation, though, and Coulson has selfishly let her. She has been sitting closer and closer to him in the course of the evening, using the heat of the word-battle as an excuse to basically invade his space on the couch. At some point she sat with her legs crossed and now her knee is constantly pressed against the side of Coulson's thigh. He knows that if this were someone other than FitzSimmons that would have made many alarms go off. And that couple of times when Skye has pretended to discuss game strategy with Coulson under their breaths just to lean into him and brush her shoulder against his. He knows they are treading dangerous waters here, but he admits he likes it.

"Come on, Fitz," Simmons chastizes her teammate, and Coulson knows that immediately she will add something very unhelpful while trying to be helpful. "Just because they don't have a PhD, or even went to college..."

There it is.

"Hey," Coulson protests.

"Sorry, sir."

"Well, I'll have you know," Skye says, "that Director Coulson here got full scholarships to a couple of pretty highly regarded colleges back in his day. You'd be surprised to discover which ones."

Coulson raises an eyebrow at Skye but she ignores it. It's not that it's a lie, technically, and he guesses she is _defending him_ but Skye is failing to mention that his academic record was backed by his sports performance and that's how he got the offers. It's not like he was a prodigy studying, he never was in the same league as FitzSimmons, he just didn't have much of a life in his late teens, so he studied surprisingly hard. Then again this is something he has told Skye _in confidence_. There is no point in bragging about something that never was. He is not nineteen anymore, he doesn't have the options he had then, or the temperament to educate himself. Truth is he understands why Fitz is so surprised to be losing at this game.

"Really?" Fitz is stunned.

Simmons looks more curious than anything. "Why didn't you go?"

"I got recruited by SHIELD," Coulson replies as sharply as he can. He's not in the mood to have this conversation.

"But he didn't have to carry the shame of getting a C on his last high school test," Skye says, looking pointedly at Fitz. "Oh, yes, Fitz, I made the conversion from your stupid Scottish system. It was a C, Mr I Have Twenty PhDs."

"We are out of snacks," Fitz says suddenly, trying to cut this line of inquiry short. Skye laughs, so pleased with herself. "I'll go make some popcorn."

"I'll help you," Simmons says. "Get the blood in the old brain flowing again."

Coulson can see they are genuinely annoyed at being beaten by him and Skye. It would be funny if it wasn't so insulting. It would be funny if Skye hadn't just made an incredible gamble, telling them something so private.

He turns to her as soon as the other two are out of earshot.

"Why did you tell them about my scholarship?"

"What?" Skye shrugs. "They'll think I read that in your file, just like Fitz's exam results were there. Relax."

Coulson shakes his head. "They are going to notice."

"Yeah, well, I had to defend my guy's honor. Didn't I?"

He is about to say something else – he kind of forgets what – when Skye kisses him quickly and closed-mouthed, with one eye towards the hallway in case FitzSimmons come back.

"They'll be back any second," he warns.

"That's why I have to do this _quickly_."

This time she kisses him on the cheek. It's all too brief but he can feel the ghost of her fingers, warm against his thigh. It's gone in a moment.

He can hear Fitz and Simmons walking back towards the room. Something powerful and joyous tugs at Coulson and he grabs Skye by the arm and pulls her to him, placing a split-of-second kiss on the corner of her mouth. When he has let her go – and FitzSimmons are already in sight – Skye's eyes are very wide, and she looks delighted.

Fitz lets himself fall into his chair with a big, frustrated sigh.

"Can I be honest with you, sir? I don't feel comfortable with Skye knowing so many details about our private, very private lives, just because she had to look at the files."

Coulson smirks. "Can I be honest with you, Fitz? You _shouldn't_ feel comfortable."

 

+

 

They can hear Trip and Fitz talking among themselves outside. Close. Very close.

Skye's knee slides up along the seat and the leather creaks for a moment, loud in their ears, and they hold their breath. The movement straddles Coulson further against the back of the seat and he has to make an effort not to groan, struggling between Skye's weight on him and his reluctance to have two of his subordinates open the door to the SUV and find him in such a position. Skye has noticed this and she is giving him an apologetic smile.

"Where is Coulson?" they hear Fitz say. "Can't seem to find him around. I need him to take a look at this."

There's a bit, in which he imagines Trip is taking a look at whatever Fitz wants to show their Director. Coulson feels a pang of guilt, for being in here instead of out there, for being in here with Skye sitting on him and running her arms along his chest like this.

"This is a big place," Trip complains. "We have yet to fix the comms in some of the dark corners. He'll turn up."

Fitz makes an irritated noise. Coulson mentally wills him to go away. It would be so easy for him and Trip to just open the door to the SUV right now.

Skye is wrapping her fist around Coulson's tie, her breath warm on his cheek. 

Her eyes are shining.

Fitz and Trip walk away.

He and Skye let out a small, relieved sigh together, giving the absurdity of the situation a little complicit smile.

"I'd better see what Fitz wants," Coulson says, loudly disappointed.

"I'm sorry," Skye tells him, letting go of his tie. He knows she thinks it's her fault, the almost getting fault. They could have locked the car doors but Skye is uncomfortable in locked rooms ever since what happened with Ward. Even when she is with Coulson she doesn't like staying in places where she can't get out easily.

He watches her face brighten up through sheer willforce. He catches her hands in his.

"But hey," she adds, "I don't think we should worry too much. Something gives me the feeling the team already knows about us."

Coulson frowns.

She leans into him and starts kissing the line of his jaw, pushing her body down against his again. He wraps his fingers around her shoulders and carefully pulls her away, until she meets his eyes.

"Why do you think the team knows?"

She raises an eyebrow.

"Because they have eyes. And I have a face. And you have a face, too, a nice one, even, and I hope your face is just as happy to see my face as my face is happy to see your... face." Coulson smiles. She chuckles and he can feel it echoing through his whole body. "Sorry, I didn't explain that too elegantly."

He takes her face in his hands, sliding up the backseat to kiss her mouth, deep and slow.

"Look at my face," he says. She does, studying him. "Doesn't it look happy?"

She doesn't reply. She has other, even less elegant, ways of showing Coulson what it is that she sees in his face.

Whatever Fitz wants of his boss he will have to wait a bit.

 

+

 

He picks the restaurant. 

He takes the decision to haul everybody out to the street again instead of going back to the base to lick their wounds. Right now morale is more important than taking more than the immediate care of the bruises and scraps. He wants everybody to see that the others are okay. He wants to know they are okay himself.

He picks Italian because it's the least polemic call he could make and he wants everybody eating and chatting as soon as possible.

This is his purpose, after all.

There are things he is supposed to do as a director.

There are things he _isn't_ supposed to do, and he is pretty sure this is one of those: worrying about Skye like this, they way she is not eating like the rest of the team, just pretending to eat, the way she is laughing at everybody else's jokes without making eye contact. As her boss he is supposed to tell her it's not her fault; he is not supposed to know exactly what she is thinking, he is not supposed to know how little good those platitudes would do her, and they would be platitudes – he realizes that intellectually Skye knows she is not responsible for her family's legacy of destruction, but that knowledge means nothing against the reality of the bruise on Simmons' cheek, the reality of May's dislocated shoulder. It's not Skye's fault but she can't know that just yet, and there's no way he can tell her. In a sense he can't wait until later, when he can be alone with her, when he has a chance to _show_ her. For now he thinks it's good that she's around her people, her real family, so that she can see how resilient they are.

He is not thinking as Director of SHIELD right now. He also realizes he has never cared about committing this particular sin, when it comes to Skye.

Everybody laughs when May orders her third beer already. Skye laughs a moment too late.

Coulson slips his hand under the mantelpiece, brushing his fingers against Skye's knee gently. Skye doesn't look at him but he can see the almost imperceptible reaction on her face, a kind of lopsided sad smile and a shimmer in her eyes. Her hand finds his under the table, holding on to it tightly.

He watches her expression for a bit, until it subtly relaxes, until her grip on his fingers loosens just a bit, until he himself can breathe a little easier.

When he glances away he notices Trip and Simmons looking straight at him.

"Yes?" he asks them.

They can't have noticed, right? No, that's absurd. In any case, Skye has withdrawn her hand from over his quickly, glacing away, pretending to be interested in what May and Fitz are saying.

"Nothing," Jemma says and smiles in a friendly way and Coulson soon forgets about the whole thing.

He watches Skye make more of an effort to join in the conversation, even though he can see she has trouble following it. She ends up eating a little bit, even. Once or twice more during the evening Coulson's hand steals to squeeze hers. This not something he is supposed to be doing, as Director of SHIELD, but to him it's what feels right.

 

+

 

"You are doing it again," Coulson says, distracted from the file he was studying, by Skye pressing her leg against his lightly.

He's at his desk and she is sitting on it, reviewing her own load of work on her tablet, in a scene that has become somewhat familiar of late. She comes into his office at some point in the morning and sits crosslegged on the other chair or, like today, just takes complete possession of a corner of his desk, keeping close to Coulson. He admits they both work better when they have each other as a sounding board for ideas. But that is when she is not being... er, _distracting_.

"What am I doing again?" she asks, absently, or pretend-absently, he is not sure, while she types something.

He catches her leg in his hand.

That makes Skye look up from her screen.

He moves his hand from her shin to her knee.

"Oh, you are doing _that_ again," Skye argues.

And yes, he is doing that again, fingers darting up the inside of her thigh, feeling for her warmth even through the fabric of her jeans, a clear first move of _something_.

That's when May walks into the office without knocking on the door.

He pulls his hand away from Skye as if burned.

"I need Skye to look over these," May says, no ceremony, no _good morning_ , no _funny seeing you here with your hands about to be all over each other_. She has an absolutely neutral look on her face, but Coulson knows that means nothing on May.

He watches her walk around his desk and give Skye a data card to examine. They start chatting about this new mission quite excitedly. Despite inminent threats, old and new, everybody seems to be walking around the place more relaxed these days. Coulson doesn't want to say _happier_ , because he might just be projecting here, but it's a good feeling. They also work together like a good-oiled machine, as the current scene proves.

It goes on for a few minutes. He could easily not be present. He studies May's face throughout, any sign that she has seen something.

Eventually Coulson tells himself not to be paranoid, because May is acting perfectly normal, there is no way she has seen anything. Knowing May if she knew something she would have already commented on it, _loudly_. He relaxes in his chair.

"Tell Billy to run this through database B," Skye concludes, giving the card back to May. "He'll know what to do."

"Fine," she nods at Skye.

She starts leaving the office, with as little ceremony as possible, and Coulson thinks they are saved, he is saved, Skye has already turned her glance back to her own task.

But then May stops at the door, turning towards the both of them.

"One more thing. Phil? Skye? Next time you want to conduct illicit relationships in the workplace, against protocol, at least lock the door. Everyone knows, but we don't need to be exposed to it."

Coulson swears that's smugness on her face, for a moment, that one last look May flashes before walking out and closing the door behind her.

Yes, that right there? That was worst possible scenario, he tells himself, a bit surprised it hasn't happened before.

The first thing he thinks is that he might have earned the _against protocol_ comment, just might.

It takes him a moment to look at Skye, wanting to make sure she is all right with all this. Her cheeks are a bit flushed but she doesn't look particularly traumatized. Coulson can't remember who decided it was too soon to tell the team but now that he thinks about it it might have been Skye.

She clears her throat. "Told you everybody knew."

"Should I go out there and explain things to the team?" he asks.

"Right now?"

"Yes."

"Everybody knows and no one has had a meltdown so I'd say they are okay with it." Coulson is unconvinced. "And _May knows_ and she's all right with it and she's my S.O. so she must be pretty confident that you are not just taking advantage of poor innocent Skye here."

At _innocent_ she presses her foot against his leg, very on point.

His hand finds its way back to its earlier place, resting happily, on Skye's thigh.

"Yes, innocent," he repeats teasingly, slowly brushing his thumb along the curve of her knee. "Still. I'm their boss, I should talk to them, one by one."

"Yeah, sure," Skye agrees half-assedly, distracted by the rhythmic movement of Coulson's hand over her leg. "At some point. But not now."

"No?"

"No. Now I think we should follow our wise colleague's advice and lock the door."

This gives Coulson pause. He knows the deal with Skye and locked spaces these days. "Are you sure?"

Skye nods. "You?"

He knows what she is asking.

He grabs the waistline of her jeans and pulls her off the desk. It takes him a bit of effort to accommodate two bodies in his chair, so for a moment it's all a mess of legs and arms, and inconvenient sensitivity that Skye is not doubt going to make a witty comment about. But when they have more or less settled, he slips one hand under her shirt and he tangles the other in her hair.

He moves to kiss her.

"Mmm, the door?" Skye reminds him.

"There's no time," Coulson says, bringing their mouths together. She kisses back, hard.

And they have no need for locked doors anymore.


End file.
